Jul. 24--The first cameras installed as part of the city's planned $10 million police surveillance network don't work as they should, police say, and roll-out of all 250 cameras is unlikely before year's end.
The images being beamed from the first 16 wireless cameras put up in West Philadelphia and Northern Liberties by Unisys Corp. do not meet the Police Department's standards, Deputy Police Commissioner Jack Gaittens said yesterday. The digital images tend to blur or break up, particularly when a camera pans across an area.
"We're coming to find out that the picture quality with a wireless network just can't be done in an urban environment," said Gaittens.
City officials are now reluctant to put a deadline on completion of the project, originally scheduled to be done by October.
"Until we get a workable, acceptable solution for everyone, we really can't go full-bore on anything," said Joe James, first deputy of the city's Division of Technology.
Unisys, the Blue Bell-based technology and security giant, "is working with the city government and the Police Department to resolve outstanding issues" while continuing to install cameras, Unisys spokesman Brad Bass said yesterday.
The Unisys contract calls for $8.9 million in the first year to install 250 cameras and set up the network. The city has spent an additional $1.1 million on a new monitoring center at Police Headquarters.
Solving the problem with the cameras could change that equation. Gaittens said improving the images would involve a system that is not completely wireless but a hybrid using the wireless cameras that feed into nearby fiber-optic cables, which would increase the cost. Whether that cost would be borne by Unisys or the city, or would result in fewer cameras, remains unclear.
Mayor John F. Street authorized the 250 cameras in October after a yearlong pilot project. A Temple University analysis of the project, released earlier this year, found that crime went down by 13 percent in the areas where the city's first 18 crime cameras were installed beginning in 2006.
Street authorized the pilot project following a May 2006 nonbinding referendum in which voters supported introduction of the cameras by a 4-1 ratio.
At the police monitoring center yesterday, Gaittens, James, and Michaelle Cooke, project manager for the city's Division of Technology, showed the wireless images side-by-side with the hard-wired cameras of the pilot project, which the city is still using. Though the digital cameras showed problems with contrast and couldn't quite match the resolution of the other cameras, police officials said they had already been instrumental in solving crimes.
Capt. Benjamin Naish, head of the Southwest Detective Division, said two sets of cameras helped solve a nonfatal shooting on the first block of South Salford Street on June 7. Two sets of the new digital cameras -- one at Market and Salford Streets, the other at 60th and Ludlow Streets -- captured the suspects clearly enough as they were fleeing to help identify them, leading to an arrest. Those same images also helped implicate one of the suspects in a shooting a week previously, Naish said.
"Certainly, they're a great assistance as an investigative tool," said Naish, whose division is the beneficiary of 15 of the cameras, which fan out from the intersection of 52d and Market Streets. One camera is at Sixth Street and Fairmount Avenue in Northern Liberties.
Delays in signing agreements with Peco Energy Co., SEPTA, and the Philadelphia Housing Authority to allow cameras on property belonging to those agencies had already pushed the project back to October. Those issues are now resolved, city officials said.
Gaittens, who has overseen the project for two police commissioners, said that he believed Unisys would be able to work out the bugs, but that the project was too big, and too important, to rush into.
"Because," Gaittens said, "I'm not going to lower my standards."
Contact staff writer Jeff Shields at 215-854-4565 or jshields@phillynews.com.
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